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Telegraph reporting 50-60% of services to be cut due to impact of covid
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dk1
Veteran Member
What a sad person that would be but they can feel free to take a picture of me eating my toast & drinking my coffee IN THE PUB & I will even smile for the camera.
DanBlanchflowe
Member
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Times, (sorry but behind pay wall), today says "Up to 50%". Also "Services are likely to run at between 50% & 60% of pre-pandemic levels for up to three months, senior rail sources said yesterday"BBC story:
Train services set to be reduced in lockdown
Some in the industry are anticipating reductions of between 50-60% of normal service in England.www.bbc.co.uk
This does say cuts of 50-60% of normal service, not to 50-60%.
Boo_
On Moderation
Would not be a shock if Northern replace some trains with buses like last time with the Rose Hill services.
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squizzler
Established Member
Perhaps the train operators should simply unbolt the chairs from half the train and use the space for goods deliveries that would be made by road except many of the drivers are having to quarantine?
YorksLad12
Established Member
Are there any numbers on Standard v First loadings (for those services that have them)?
I was conversing with one of the voices in my head yesterday that my main reason for using First on LNER (aside from leisure) is when I have to return from London after a meeting. I usually get the 1803 or 1833 and book myself into First so that I can have my tea on the way back, as well as the space and a single seat.
But if there's no catering, the advantage of First is reduced somewhat. If First was declassified (or if most of First was), would that allow more passengers to be carried per train, assuming that most people travel Standard? And thus aid in the reduction of services?
I was conversing with one of the voices in my head yesterday that my main reason for using First on LNER (aside from leisure) is when I have to return from London after a meeting. I usually get the 1803 or 1833 and book myself into First so that I can have my tea on the way back, as well as the space and a single seat.
But if there's no catering, the advantage of First is reduced somewhat. If First was declassified (or if most of First was), would that allow more passengers to be carried per train, assuming that most people travel Standard? And thus aid in the reduction of services?
bramling
Veteran Member
This was before social media was a twinkle in the eye, though your point remains very valid.
The rail network isn't set up for the logistics that would require. Most goods would still require onwards road transport at either end, and most stations aren't equipped with car parks big enough for a lorry to load and unload, let alone turn around. Then there's the issue of getting bulky loads through train doors (good look with that on a narrow-doored unit like a 156!) and through the vestibule.
There is certainly the potential for rail freight growth but that only really works efficiently where you have large quantities of goods needing to be regularly transported from one fixed location to another, e.g. consumables for factories or aggregates for construction. Today's rail network simply isn't suited to most other loads.
It would be a dangerous precedent if fares doubled when the service in better times improved from 1tph to 2tph.
If a mid-season service alteration is sufficiently substantial to constitute a variation of contract, you would likely be entitled to a pro-rata refund if you hand in your season. That being said you can get a season ticket refund under the NRCoT without needing a reason, albeit not on a pro-rata basis, at almost any time.
If you decide to keep your season, all Passenger's Charters I have read say that the TOCs will not pay Delay Repay for delays incurred as a result of planned timetable changes. You would be unlikely to be entitled to a lump sum of compensation in any case, as the inconvenience of the change will depend on your exact number of journeys made (and the delay incurred on each one).
The part of the NRCoT setting out the minimum entitlement to delay compensation (50% of the relevant portion for a 1+ hour delay) does not contain any exclusion like above, although I would be surprised if any TOCs willingly paid up under those provisions but not under their Delay Repay scheme.
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Observations today from St Albans are a phenomenal amount of fresh air - lots of trains completely empty (1230 to 1600) , maximum load observed on a 700 12 car was 6 passengers.
WelshBluebird
Established Member
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I don't think anyone can be surprised by this as a temporary measure, given that most services will be pretty damn quiet.
Hell even when restrictions were lifted after the first lockdown many services I travelled on only had a handful of people in each carriage.
In terms of the pub discussion - to be fair quite a lot of companies / organisations have similar policies. My friend works for the council and they have been told they must remove their council ID badge from their necks if they go into a licensed premises. I guess a uniform is harder to easily remove, but the general principle of not having on display where you work in a licensed premises is pretty common.
Hell even when restrictions were lifted after the first lockdown many services I travelled on only had a handful of people in each carriage.
In terms of the pub discussion - to be fair quite a lot of companies / organisations have similar policies. My friend works for the council and they have been told they must remove their council ID badge from their necks if they go into a licensed premises. I guess a uniform is harder to easily remove, but the general principle of not having on display where you work in a licensed premises is pretty common.
Except that generally isn't true as there are some sacrifices by offshoring to that extent:
- You lose the ability to easily get people into the office when they need to be (either on a certainly number of days a week or for meetings when required).
- You start having to deal with time zone differences (sounds simple - but as someone who interacts will colleagues around the glove, working out when people from different countries are going to be free is a huge pain).
- Different national holidays also can get in the way and you have to make a real effort not to be caught out by that).
- This is generalisation but it is one that usually ends up being true - as you offshore you generally lose quality. This has been seen quite often in both call centre and IT offshoring where in both cases many companies have actually brought jobs back onshore at great cost just because offshore options were not good enough.
- For some jobs there is a clear communication cost by offshoring, probably most often seen with call centres but I've also experienced it working with offshore IT teams.
- Again another generalisation but there is often a culture shift by offshoring. Again from personal experience one thing you can often lose is the willingness of employees to go the extra mile for the business when needed in terms of hours or effort etc.
But, with the exception of HS1, fares haven't been linked to timetable improvements for the last 25 years. They have increased by broadly the same amount everywhere, even on lines which now see a worse service. Equally the precedent has been set that electrification and service improvements like on the GWML no longer attract an additional increase.
The more fundamental point is that service frequency has a significant impact on journey time (c.f. Generalised Journey Time). A reduction in frequency means the journey effectively takes longer and a major TT change could therefore fundamentally alter the basis on which the contract is made - the right to be transported from A to B in accordance with the timetable.
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Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
SouthEastern has twice today tweeted that they are not planning to reduce service - though they did add that this would be subject to regular review.
Boo_
On Moderation
Issue is it not down TOCs what they run now if they get told to cut they cut.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
The industry should have been ahead of the curve here with a contingency plan to move to if a lockdown was imposed as better to run something that can be sustained through staff self isolation as well as being more proportionate to traffic on offer. That said, if as another poster said they can't furlough staff, what are there really saving here a bit of overtime and rest day working on staff, diesel / EC4T costs, forget track access charges thats just a money go round and if NR isn't getting it they will have to make savings as well presumably. There is deeper issue over the long term potentially but depends on direction of future policy towards public transport.
This is also an opportunity for the likes of GA and SWR to get ahead of the curve on driver training by forming driver bubbles so at least passengers will have new trains to incentivise them to travel.
Also NR needs to get on with works such that disruptive possessions are all but suspended at weekends come early summer so there is no disincentive for people to use the railway and have a good travelling experience such that they will spread the word. This is how we get people back in due course.
Finally all of us know how challenging it is to run rush hour peaks in London with high levels of resources deployed for one or two services at best as well as all the performance risk that comes with it. So if working patterns are going to change then a standard timetable all day long will be easier to run although I doubt commuting will be as depressed as forecast but quite frankly spreading the burden across the day will make for a better travelling experience. Ultimately though if the price is right folk will come and what the govt needs to decide is that with climate change and air quality issues in cities public transport is a necessity. It will need appropriate support and I would say we are way off public transport being abandoned but unions will need to realise that to protect jobs there will be challenges on the way staff are deployed and better to work with management as the industry can ill afford and industrial action.
This is also an opportunity for the likes of GA and SWR to get ahead of the curve on driver training by forming driver bubbles so at least passengers will have new trains to incentivise them to travel.
Also NR needs to get on with works such that disruptive possessions are all but suspended at weekends come early summer so there is no disincentive for people to use the railway and have a good travelling experience such that they will spread the word. This is how we get people back in due course.
Finally all of us know how challenging it is to run rush hour peaks in London with high levels of resources deployed for one or two services at best as well as all the performance risk that comes with it. So if working patterns are going to change then a standard timetable all day long will be easier to run although I doubt commuting will be as depressed as forecast but quite frankly spreading the burden across the day will make for a better travelling experience. Ultimately though if the price is right folk will come and what the govt needs to decide is that with climate change and air quality issues in cities public transport is a necessity. It will need appropriate support and I would say we are way off public transport being abandoned but unions will need to realise that to protect jobs there will be challenges on the way staff are deployed and better to work with management as the industry can ill afford and industrial action.
dk1
Veteran Member
That's exactly what GA are & have been doing for months & months now. Very well organised indeed.
They have done as much advance planning as is reasonably practicable. Many will still have their original March timetables at the ready to be applied as appropriate, but it's not just a case of copy and pasting.
It's easy to underestimate the amount of work involved in changing the timetable. "Just cancel the trains, it can't be that hard" - well actually it is. There's lots of work that's needed behind the scenes, and for those days with engineering works they may have to be entirely replanned. So these things all have a certain lead time.
Some TOCs have already given up on training again, there are so many potential blockers and there is not a sufficiently high level of coordination between TOCs to ensure that effective methods are uniformly adopted. The increased infectiousness of the new variant(s) is certainly not helping, in several respects.
Another sensible and easily made suggestion that's not so easy to implement in practice. These things are planned long in advance - we are talking years for some of the bigger schemes. Should we rip all that planning up, potentially delaying important schemes like Kings Cross Uncrossed by months or years as you go back to square one?
There have been a few cases where NR has been able to do this but it depends on everything falling into place, including having the workforce available at the right times and total cooperation from all parties involved.
Not necessarily. If you made the railways free tomorrow - or even paid people to travel - you still wouldn't see any appreciable increase in usage.
Boo_
On Moderation
It so easy to say let's do all the big work on the railways now that there cuts but it just like the motorways there only so many people skilled to do the
work and only so much plant you can hire in.
work and only so much plant you can hire in.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Fair point would be unwise to unpick major project possessions as long as those possessions are being used as intended ie the projects remain on plan. To clarify my main point here was across summer period it would be a real positive if the industry did all it could to defer disruptive possessions so passengers have a good travelling experience especially as staycations are likely to be main holiday opportunities for people this year. We need passengers to ensure we keep the railway we've built back up over the last two decades otherwise we risk ending up managing controlled decline again.
PG
Established Member
Maybe its like rumours in politics? If its denied then its true...
Nice idea but I can't see it happening. I'd love it if passengers had been given the option to travel via Waterloo from Clapham Junction, during peak rush hour when fast trains didn't stop at Clapham Junction but that was never allowed.
So whilst it would be nice, I can't see it happening.
It might also take time to figure out a d implement, by which time the 2 to 3 months might be up.
I decent thing to help passengers return would be to run a more comprehensive train service sooner after lockdown has finished. Especially if the vaccine is really helping by then.
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I agree with this from our own experience of trying to recruit offshore workers to permanently work odd hours. Very few workers want to work from 8pm to 4am, and the best workers don’t have to. There are some people who are both good and prefer those sorts of hours and we found a couple of them, but scaling at quality is not going to be feasible.
Your choices, sadly, are a) like it, b) lump it, or c) surrender your season ticket for a partial refund.
Matt Taylor
Established Member
SWR reverting to their Summer Covid timetable so not a huge change. Disappointing that 'Summer Covid timetable' is even a thing.
Bread & cheese
Member
You must now have RSI from tapping this out so many times.
The research does not agree with you. There is not going to be a shift from road to rail, not even a tiny bit. People who used rail to commute pre Covid were more than twice as likely to work from home than car commuters, and were already (on average) doing much longer journeys than car commuters. Looking forward, people who use rail are much more likely to work from home more in future than car commuters.
Rail has a long and difficult time ahead, some traffic has gone forever.
March timetables and plans are, sadly, not any use now for most TOCs. They will be in the wrong ‘data’ (December 2019 timetable, not December 2020), and none of them had any measures in them to protect staff - extra time for cleaning, that sort of thing.
Rail has a difficult time ahead, and whilst commuting will be hit hard it's likely that rail will see growth going forwards.
Whilst people switching to rail from road for commuting is very unlikely (although not impossible and there may be some who do, although chances are that's going to be something which is a longer term thing, especially given that it's much easier to get home deliveries than it was a year ago) that wasn't the main point of what I was saying there.
What I was saying was if you only need one car for commuting but for a few trips a year a second car would be "needed" then it's unlikely that a second car would be purchased as it would likely cost over £1,000 (with the average annual car cost being over £3,000) and probably not be used all that much.
Whilst many such trips could well be done with hire cars, there's likely to be a fair few which are done by rail.
Let's take as an example a couple where one of them is visiting friends and the other family, it may well be that the one visiting family drivers there whilst the other goes by train.
Whilst such trips may be infrequent it may well be that over the year they total 300 miles of travel (maybe a bit less maybe more, in that some could do that on a single trip) Whilst that's tiny compared to a commuter doing 13,000 miles a year, it's got the potential to allow growth to happen going forwards.
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
I think the reconstruction of rail travel is going to take a good few years. Bedrock commuting and long distance inter-city travel is the driver of an awful lot of rail activity.
Modest increases on rural branch line services in say the west country or elsewhere hardly make a dent in the sustainabilty and affordability of the industry.
There has been , and will be , a major resetting of how people move around. And if you think it is bad for the railways , consider the airline industry ........
Modest increases on rural branch line services in say the west country or elsewhere hardly make a dent in the sustainabilty and affordability of the industry.
There has been , and will be , a major resetting of how people move around. And if you think it is bad for the railways , consider the airline industry ........
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